Adding commercial blueberry juice - what to watch out for?

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muppix

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Afternoon everyone! In my continuing assault on good taste I'm going to add some cheaply purchased supermarket blueberry juice to some cider we pressed back in September, maybe a little sugar, then kick her into secondary fermentation. Are there any additives that I need to look out for in my blueberry juice because they're known to cause problems? I do love to experiment but sometimes it pays to put the feelers out first... Cheers!
 
Yes if it has anything like potassium sorbate, sodium metabisuphite or anything that looks like these, don't use it in your cider. It could stop your fermentation.

The other thing to be aware of is artificial sweeteners in these kinds of juices. They won't ferment and depending on your thoughts on artificial sweeteners it could leave it tasting strange.

If you're unsure just take a picture post the ingredients on the label on here
 
Hey @fury_tea - sorry for the delayed reply. We went back into lockdown yesterday and I got sidetracked panic-buying picking up the bare essentials.

When you say "anything that looks like these" I'm hoping that you have a far greater knowledge of chemicals than I, and are referring to similar compounds to things that will ruin my brew, as opposed to just any complicated-sounding ingredient that I don't understand. No, seriously, I thought Xylitol was the devil's contraceptive until I started adding it to my cider. All good now.

Anyway, back to the ingredients, now that I've had a chance to grab them from my lock-up. Anything here raise red flags? Seems pretty mundane to me:

IMG_3946.jpeg IMG_3945.jpeg IMG_3944.jpeg

Cheers Mister!
 
Yeah you'll be ok with those, I've used that cherry juice in the past in a cider, it came out ok, and I've maybe used the blueberry one as well!

What's your plan? Mix them all together or separately? Also, out of interest what's your planned recipe, if you have one?
 
Great, that's good to know. As for "plan" I'm afraid I don't have one yet, it just occurred to me that I have enough leftover cider from September to try and make a blend, and I'm on the lookout for some ingredients which won't altogether ruin the hard work we put in milling and pressing.

I'm somewhat less careful with the fruit of other people's labour, and have just bottled 5 litres of Farting Thrush, which is (natch) a mix of Tesco Apple, Cranberry, and Raspberry. Only had a small nip from the trial jar before bottling, and it's utter tramp-fuel. Wonderful. ;)
 

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